SPOTLIGHT
Volume 2, Number 6
June 23, 2009
June Sponsor
Balanced Scorecard
As a general rule, we don't see much high level process thinking in business schools - processes
don't fit well into their silo-focused model of how businesses are organized. Put in a slightly
different way, most business schools are organized into departments that reflect the functional
units in organizations. Professors teach courses in marketing, finance, and operations but few
business schools have professors who teach business processes, as we define them. The closest
most business schools come to process is usually someone in operations, who thinks of process
as a subset of operations. In spite of their generally siloed view, some very important work has
been done in business schools. Michael Porter's work on strategy development, value chains and
how companies achieve a competitive advantage, is very important. In a similar way, Robert S.
Kaplan and David P. Norton have contributed a key element that many process-oriented
companies find very useful - the idea of the Balanced Scorecard.
The Balanced Scorecard was, initially, an approach to measurement. The term was coined by
Robert S. Kaplan (a Harvard Business School accounting professor) and David P. Norton (a
consultant) in an article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review, "The Balanced Scorecard
- Measures that Drive Performance", in January-February of 1992.
The basic idea is very straight forward. Kaplan and Norton began by arguing that "What you
measure is what you get" and that "an organization's measurement system strongly affects the
behavior of managers and employees." They went on to say that "traditional financial
accounting measures, like return-on-investment and earning-per-share, can give misleading
signals for continuous improvement and innovation..." To counter the tendency to rely too
heavily on financial accounting measures, Kaplan and Norton argued that senior executives
should establish a scorecard that takes multiple measures into account. They proposed a
Balanced Scorecard that considered four types of measures:
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Financial Measures: How Do We Look to Shareholders?
Internal Business Measures: What Must We Excel At?
Innovation and Learning Measures: Can We Continue to Improve and Create Value?
Customer Measures: How Do Customers See Us?
Figure 1 illustrates a Scorecard of a hypothetical company discussed in Kaplan and Norton's
January-February 1992 article, "Electronic Circuits Inc (ECI)".
The article was well received, and Kaplan and Norton proceeded to write more articles and
eventually expanded this nice, but simple idea into a book: The Balanced Scorecard: Translating
Strategy into Action. (Harvard Business School Press, 1996)
The initial article on the Balanced Scorecard appeared just as business process reengineering
was taking off in the early Nineties. Subsequent articles emphasized two important ideas linking processes to customer concerns and linking measures to strategies. Many of the early
business process theorists emphasized the importance of measurement, but didn't provide
specifics about how to accomplish it. It became popular for business process gurus to mention
the Balanced Scorecard, when asked to explain how to align strategies, processes and
measures.
The Balanced Scorecard approach rapidly grew into a minor industry. Kaplan and Norton went
on to write several more HBR articles and several books on the Balanced Scorecard. (They also
produced tapes and a newsletter published by HBS, and Kaplan also co-authored a third book
with Paul Niven.) Other authors joined in and a search at Barnes & Noble produces a list of
some 49 titles with the keywords "Balanced Scorecard."
It's rather interesting to follow the evolution of the Balanced Scorecard idea. It began with the
injunction that managers ought to measure more than financial results, and proposed a matrix
with four types of measures: financial, internal (process), innovation and learning, and
customer.
Figure 1. ECI's Balanced Business Scorecard
(After a Figure in Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scorecard - Measures that Drive
Performance.)
In their HBR article in 1993 ("Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work" HBR, Sept-Oct, 1993),
Kaplan and Norton offered an overview of how one could link the Balanced Scorecard to
corporate strategies. Figure 2 provides an overview of the approach they proposed.
Figure 2. Linking Strategies to Balanced Scorecard Measures.
Like the basic idea behind the Scorecard itself, there is nothing wrong with this idea. There
ought to be a systematic link between a company's strategy, its goals, and the measures used
to determine if the goals are being met or not.
The Balanced Scorecard has proved popular for many reasons. The most important reason is
simply that it served as a wakeup call in the mid-Nineties. Many senior managers were relying
too heavily on financial measures, and a tidy model that suggested how they might rely on
other measures, including process measures and customer satisfaction, proved popular.
In 2000 Kaplan and Norton came out with a new book and another HBR article: "Having Trouble
with Your Strategy? Then Map It." (HBR, Sept-Oct, 2000.) The new article is, in our opinion,
more dubious. They suggest what they term "Balanced Scorecard Strategy Maps." In essence,
they introduce a hierarchical model that suggests that some measures contribute to others and
are summed up in shareholder value. Figure 3 summarizes the idea behind the Balanced
Scorecard Strategy Maps.
Figure 3. Balanced Scorecard Strategy Maps.
(Modified from figures in the book Strategy Maps)
When we look at Figure 3, it seems very much like we have come full circle. We have gone from
the idea that senior managers should not rely exclusively on financial measures, but on four
balanced sets of measures, to the idea that there is a hierarchy of measures, and that financial
measures are on the top. If I was a senior executive and saw Figure 3, I'd assume that I could
rely on the financial measures, and delegate the monitoring of supportive measures to lower
level managers. Ignoring that objection, consider the four categories of internal measures
suggested by Figure 3. In essence, these are the processes that Kaplan and Norton seem to
think executives should be concerned with. There's nothing here that suggests a value chain or
how a process interacts with a customer.
All this suggests, perhaps, why so many organizations approach Scorecards from a different
angle. Most keep the idea of a differentiated set of measures that capture different perspectives.
Some even keep the four categories, but many create new categories. The Supply Chain
Council's SCOR, for example, has seven categories. When using Scorecards in conjunction with
process architecture development, our BPTrends Associates BPM methodology defines a
Scorecard as having both a functional dimension and a process dimension. In other words, we
start with the organization's Scorecard and ask if the measures (KPIs) are things we will hold a
functional manager responsible for achieving, and we define the measures we will use to
evaluate the performance of a value chain or process manager. Then, as we define more specific
processes, we define more specific process Scorecards to 1) assure that the measures are
aligned, and 2) to define what the respective process manager is expected to achieve.
Figure 4. Using Balanced Scorecards for Both Functions and Processes.
Organizations ought to have Scorecards, and subdivisions of the organization - whether
departments or processes - ought to have their own Scorecards that are aligned with the
organization Scorecard. In turn, sub processes, or units within departments, ought to have their
own Scorecards that are similarly aligned.
What too many process improvement programs have lacked is a systematic way of aligning
measures. That's exactly what Scorecards provide. Moreover, they are widely accepted, and
thus, it is often easy for process improvement groups to tie into Scorecard efforts and obtain a
systematic approach to aligning measures.
We've been tracking Scorecard systems for several years on BPTrends and are especially
interested in books or articles that show how Scorecards can be used to support process
improvement or process architecture efforts. The following are a few of the related Articles and
Book Reviews we have published over the years:
Business Process Management and the Balanced scorecard by Ralph Smith - Paul Harmon March 06, 2007
Many companies have adopted Balanced scorecard as a way of evaluating managerial
performance. A significant number have moved beyond the basic model and now use Strategy
Mapping to align their process and organization goals. This book looks at how BPM and Balanced
scorecard can be used together.
Beyond SOX: Corporate Improvement with 4th Generation Balanced scorecard - Tomonori
Tomura - December 05, 2006
In this article, Tomonori Tomura, the Managing Director of the Japan Management Research
Institute (JMRI), advocates a new approach that employs a Balanced scorecard in conjunction
with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). He suggests that this new approach can lead to greater
improvements in corporate value in the post-SOX era. Describing recent work undertaken in
Japan, the author hopes to stimulate an international discussion and urges readers of this article
to contact him with their comments.
Behavior Matters: Upgrading the People Perspective in Balanced scorecards - Steve Shoonover January 06, 2004
Steve Shoonover takes a look at the Balanced scorecard and considers how the people
perspective can be better represented in this important management.
Book Review: Strategy Maps by Kaplan and Norton - Paul Harmon - September 07, 2004
This month, Paul Harmon reviews the latest book from the team that gave us the Balanced
scorecard.
Book Review: Six Sigma Business scorecard by Praveen Gupta - Paul Harmon - June 01, 2004
This month we review a book that describes the intersection of two key business process
technologies.
Balanced scorecard Step-By-Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results, Second
Edition by Paul Niven - Paul Harmon - October 07, 2008
This is the second edition of Paul Niven's popular step-by-step approach to developing a
balanced scorecard system. Paul Harmon takes this opportunity to review a standard approach
to creating and using a balanced scorecard system and contrasts it to the approach increasingly
used by business process people.
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Using Balanced scorecard to Support a Business Process Architecture - Paul Harmon - October
16, 2007
Many companies use Balanced scorecard, or some variation of it, to organize their performance
measurement and management evaluations. With only a little extension, Balanced scorecard
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can become a key element in a Business Process Architecture.
Till next time,
Paul Harmon
Business Process Trends · 88 Waban Park · Newton · MA · 02458